18Jan 2013

Losing the Security in Your Life

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Abandonment is one of those secret hurts that manifests itself in so many ways such as loneliness, depression, anger, and fear. I know this firsthand because I experienced all of these feelings growing up but at the core of all of it was abandonment. As I matured in my faith I have found three things, why we feel abandonment, how it manifests itself as destructive behaviors, and the solution for it.

The very moment that my mom gave birth to me, she gave me away. I didn’t know at the time, but the moment that I needed my mom the most, she abandoned me. The same recurring message was sent to me again when my mom divorced, and again when she divorced a second time. I felt as though all of these people, the people most important in my life were leaving me, and why? It was like a message that was being sent to me (my heart) that said, Dear Peter, I’m leaving you because I don’t love you.

When the people most important in your life are leaving you, it’s hard not to wonder if something is wrong with you. You add on top of that, growing up in a community that is largely very different from you (racially) along with a lot of racism and you could say I was a pretty broken child inside.

How did I cope with all of this? All of the feelings that I had, anger, loneliness, depression, and fear had become a part of me. I started to believe that people really didn’t love me, that I had nothing to offer this world, that I was a failure, and maybe that was the very reason why everyone had left me. I ended up going on dating sites trying to get girls to like me, to see something inside of me that I thought my biological mother had missed.

I drank alcohol and watched porn, I even ended up flunking out of my freshman year of college. I had no idea where I was going, who I was, and if anyone really cared about me. As I look back, I found that I had used those things as an escape, a place to getaway from the reality that I didn’t want to face. For some of you, the place to escape might be drugs, alcohol, prostitution, abuse, pornography, violence, romance novels, or even behaviors such as putting other’s down in order to make yourself feel better.

All of these behaviors often stem from a core issue of abandonment. When the people we love hurt us and then leave us, we begin to feel as though something is wrong with us, that we have nothing to offer. This can’t be farther from the truth, which brings me to my next point, what is the solution?

I tried a lot of things in this world to try and escape the hurts that wounded me for many years. I also knew a lot of people who tried things such as drugs and violence to escape the pain they felt from experiences they were hurt by. But what I can tell you is that all of those things, all of the things that the world has to offer will only provide temporary relief which is why it’s so easy to become addicted to those places of escape.

Since their so temporary and fleeting, there is no way they will ever satisfy and give you the peace that each one of us so desperately desires. When I finally found God which took me several years to finally give my life to him because I was so afraid, so hurt, so fearful that God might do the same to me. I also had a hard time believing that God’s promises were true when my experiences told me that promises get broken all the time.

I also thought how could a loving God put me through so much pain, how does that show me that he cares about me? Well, I got an answer one night when my girlfriend’s mother called me. Her mother knew I was adopted but didn’t know I was hurt by it. That night she called Seonyoung to tell me to look up a scripture that God wanted me to know.

“”Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!” -Isaiah 49:15

I couldn’t explain it but I was in tears that night. I knew that God was speaking directly to me and It really put me in tears knowing that he really did care about me.

 What gives you security? Do you believe in the author’s perspective on security? How do you handle times when you lose the perceived security in your life? Leave your comments below!

 

17Jan 2013

Top 5 Reasons To Save Sex For Marriage

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1. You really don’t know if the person your having sex with is the ‘one.’ It’s pretty common nowadays for people to have multiple partners before they get married. This undoubtedly can cause doubt and future problems down the road.

2. Disease, the average person has 2-3 partners (minimum), which means when you have sex with someone your really creating the potential exchange of sexually transmitted diseases with 4-6 other people. Not only do you put yourself at risk for sexually transmitted diseases but the idea of this can’t be all that appealing anymore can it?

3. Sex creates such a strong, emotional response that it often causes misconstrued feelings that lead to irrational decisions. Basically, you might ‘hook up’ with someone and think that everything is great for awhile until the emotions subside and you realize that you guys have absolutely nothing in common. What’s worse is you see people leaving marriages to have a one night ‘fling,’ only to lose their entire marriage, children, and reputation. It happens all too often.

4. Sex can lead to unwanted pregnancies which can make life much, much harder later on. Too many times I see see teenage girls walk into the clinic totally unprepared for the life she has to face. Their is no easy way out, abortion often leads to psychological problems later on and adoption still involves a lot of paperwork and of course, the entire 9 months of pregnancy (economic costs, stress, increased responsibility, missed youth).

5. Sex is often confused as defining love. Example, a guy says he loves you so much and sleeps with you until a couple months later he has an affair with another woman. True love is shown through patience and self-control. Giving into sex is always the easy way out. However, when you save yourself for that one special person that you intend on being with the rest of your life it is a much greater form of love. It confirms to the other person that you really care about them and are willing to do anything for the other person, that is love.

Do you agree with the author’s perspective? Should sex be saved for marriage? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to saving sex for marriage? Leave your comments below!

17Jan 2013

Keep Life Simple

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Sometimes we make life so much more complicated than it needs to be. You could even argue that “Christians” make it even more complicated.

Everyday it seems, we scurry around, faster and faster we go, more this, more that, when it almost would seem like we are running around in circles.

We are missing the point of this thing we call, life.

Today, there is so much emphasis in church on God’s law. Do this, do that, you must pray this much time, you must go to church, you must go to this church and not that church, homosexuals are bad and we must prevent this law from happening, you must go and preach this, you must read this version of the Bible, if your not doing these things something is wrong with you, are you really a Christian?

I am by no means saying that following God’s law isn’t important, what I am saying though is that we are all (especially Christians) missing the point of what it means to follow God.

All God really wants from us…is a relationship. A relationship, ya know, the one where you talk with them about things, Cry together, laugh together over ridiculous things, love each other wholesomely with all your heart….a relationship.

A journey where two people walk side by side…together. I’m convinced that this is such a problem because I myself often find myself trying to fulfill God’s law and always left feeling hopeless, guilty, and running around in circles.

We get too caught up in the culture of things and this cultural thinking has infiltrated churches and church leaders spreading a message so focused on following God’s law, that so many people are simply getting exhausted, burnt out, and missing the whole point of it all, a relationship with God.

We get so fixated on the problem that we lose sight of the solution.

And what happens when you stare at something longer? It gets bigger.

So keep it simple, don’t complicate things and focus on the solution not the problem.

“ My heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.” -St. Augustine

Do you agree with the author’s perspective? Is technology and social media making us lose focus of what’s most important in our lives? What is the most important thing(s) in your life? Leave your comments below!

15Jan 2013

How To Heal From Past Hurts (Part 1)

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I’ve recently been reading an incredible book called, Homecoming by John Bradshaw. He talks in the book about how we have an inner hurting child from the past who manifests him/herself in unhealthy ways as we get older. I’d like to share my own personal experiences based on this book in this 2-part series.

Bradshaw highlights 6 ways that our inner hurt child contaminates our lives (Hurts)

Co-dependence

Offender behaviors

Trust issues

Acting out/In

Magical beliefs

Intimacy dysfunctions

Non-disciplined behaviors

Addictive/compulsive behaviors

Thought distortions

Emptiness

As you can see, the highlighted part spells out the word contaminate. As I was going through this myself what I found was that I really had or did almost all of these things at one point or another with the majority still occurring as an adult.

Co-dependence is described in the book as a loss of identify (unaware of one’s needs, desires, and feelings). What happens in a dysfunctional family system, in my case my parents divorced, I was forced to focus on the outside world since the pain was so great seeing my family being torn apart.

Over time I lost my ability to understand who I was (my identity) and therefore wasn’t able to generate any self-esteem. I basically had to rely on the outside world to generate any self-esteem to make me feel better about myself. I still do this through talking with girls (to get approval), bragging about my gpa or my status of wanting to be a doctor (even though I’m more than likely going to be a physician assistant), putting others down, buying things I can’t afford to impress people, etc.

The list goes on and on and I have no doubt that any family dysfunction (violence, divorce, abuse) can cause this loss of identity.

Offender behavior is when we act out inappropriately towards others. Bradshaw describes that we tend ‘act out’ in the only way that we know how (how our parents/caretakers modeled their emotions). My parents were relatively calm and I very rarely saw my father get extremely mad at me or others. I actually have never saw my mother yell at anyone.

This makes sense to me, my parents did a great job of modeling healthy ways of acting out their emotions and I have modeled this as an adult. However, the opposite can be obviously true as well. For a child who grows up in an abusive home he or she learns to identify with how the parent(s) model their emotions, in this case, violence.

Another example from my own life is that when my parents divorced I went to live with my sister and mom far away from my father. Several years passed and my sister and I eventually went to go live with him. What we found was that he would ‘spoil’ us because he had missed us so much. He showed his love in one of the ways he knew how, spoiling us by buying us things.

Unfortunately (sorry dad), this wasn’t exactly the healthiest way to demonstrate love, in fact, it was unhealthy.

According to the book, when children are spoiled they tend to develop a, ‘I’m superior than others’ attitude. This is something that becomes a learned behavior and as children grow older they lose all sense of responsibility and believe they deserve special treatment. I knew this was especially true for me, I have accumulated lots of unneeded debt as a student because I always felt like I was entitled to it and that I wasn’t really responsible for it (ouch, this one is really impacting me today).

Trust issues develop when parents/caretakers are untrustworthy. All of a sudden, the outside world becomes a dangerous place to children and they develop a deep sense of distrust.

As a child, my mother divorced twice, once when I was 7 or 8 and again around the age of 13. Both times my father and step-father had cheated on my mom. I found as I grew older that I was really protective of myself, I didn’t trust anyone and I certainly wouldn’t let anyone in, including God.

I put up walls and barriers (status, act mature, look religious, buy expensive things on credit, etc.) to give people the illusion that everything was ‘ok,’ when I was really crying for help on the inside. This was not my ‘true self,’ but a false identity in which I put tremendous amount of effort in to conceal my past hurts and how I really felt about myself.

I also developed a very controlling attitude.

Early on in my relationship with my girlfriend, I would actually avoid all situations that seemed a bit too, ‘unpredictable.’ This included most social situations unless it was at my place, I avoided social gatherings, I avoided certain classes that I feared I would be humiliated in and wasn’t good at.

All of these things were merely an attempt to hide the fact that my inner hurting child needed to grieve the pain that I couldn’t express as a child.

Acting out/in is a common behavior among people who are hurt from the past. According to Bradshaw, when our inner child is hurt, our emotions and feelings become frozen in the time when we were hurt and were never allowed to express them. Since they couldn’t be expressed in a healthy way we tend to express it in an abnormal behavior (acting in/out).

For example, when I was born I was immediately dropped off by my biological mother at an orphanage and placed up for adoption. I obviously didn’t understand it at the time but I felt the impact of that event as I grew older. To this day I had always felt a sense of brokenness about myself. I felt rejected and abandoned and what happened is that since I felt like I never received the loving/nurturing care from my biological mom, I tend to generalize and talk to any female who will give me the attention and love that I felt I needed as a child.

According to Bradshaw, Non-disciplined behaviors are a result of parents who fail to model healthy discipline. When a parent or parents/caretakers fail to do this (lack of discipline), the chid becomes stubborn and compulsive in their behaviors.

I commend my parents for raising both my sister and I, I know that they did the best that they could. Discipline was a bit of a mixed bag growing up because of all of the dysfunction in my family. My mother was probably the most balanced in her discipline towards us, my father was probably on the side of a toal lack of discipline, and my step-father was probably a bit on the too much discipline side.

As a result, I’m a bit tri-polar lol…….just kidding. Actually, I’m very compulsive in my adult life now. For example, if I see something I want to buy I generally will buy it even if I have to use my credit card. I have no doubt this is influenced by the fact that I never had healthy, stable modeling of behaviors and discipline.

I’ll go over how I think God fits into all of this as well as the last 3 behaviors in Part 2 of, Why we still hurt from the Past. Thanks for reading!

 What are some hurts you struggle to deal with today? How do you handle them? What do you think is the solution to healing past hurts? Leave your comments below!

15Jan 2013

Here’s A Quick Way to Keep The Right Perspective Through Life’s Challenges

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Have you ever thought to yourself how you got to to work today safely or how healthy you are right now? Or how about the fact that you have money in the bank, a roof over your head, a car to drive, and food on the table? We often overlook these things and take them for granted because we’re so focused on our own problems.

Some of you might say, well, I don’t have money in the bank and I’m struggling to make end’s meet, I don’t have a car to drive or my car is broken, and some of you may feel overwhelmed at work. However, for every thing you think you don’t have, one could  argue that you do have at least something to be thankful for.

For example, a person who doesn’t have a car is at least healthy enough to walk. For the person struggling to make end’s meet, maybe you still have a family you can go home to. For the person whose overwhelmed at work, at least you have a job that allows to provide for yourself or your family.

The truth is, we all have something to be thankful for. Their is always someone out there who would gladly take your problems, difficulties, and stress over theirs. When you keep the right perspective, then God begins to work in your life.

Their is a story in the Bible about a wealthy man named Job. Job had everything, a large amount of land, money, and a beautiful wife and family. One day Job lost everything, he lost his wife, he lost his children, he lost his flock, and even got terrible boils all over his skin.

Most of us would have reacted the same way he did which was, why are you doing this to me God and please kill me now. Job described his situation as he would have rather not even been born! Job becomes increasingly critical of God until a friend name Elihu stops by to talk to him. Do you get critical of God in difficult times?

Elihu explains to Job that God communicates with humans by two ways—visions and physical pain. He says that physical suffering provides the sufferer with an opportunity to realize God’s love and forgiveness when he is well again, understanding that God has “ransomed” him from an impending death.

Job’s attitude and heart eventually turns when God speaks to him. God goes on to bless Job in amazing ways that I’m sure he never even dreamed of.  So what does this all mean?

Life’s difficulties are often times ways that God  wants us to grow. For example, when you take your child to the dentist for a cavity you know it’s going to be painful. Your child is crying while your heart breaks knowing how much pain your child is going through. However, you still do it because you understand that by doing it, it’ll help them become healthier.

In the same way, God allows certain circumstances in your life to help you become stronger, healthier, more loving, more patient, more humble, more like him. On top of that, when we keep the right perspective through life’s most difficult times, God’s blessings are waiting to be showered upon us just like Job.

 How do you handle trials or difficulties in your life? Do you agree with the author’s perspective? Leave your comments below!

 

15Jan 2013

Why Do I feel So Lonely?

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Have you ever felt alone? Nearly every person has experienced this which is why it is one of the most googled phrases and topics that people look for. The reason we all experience this is because we weren’t built to be alone.

We need people, we need our family, our friends, our spouses or husbands, and our children. We’re often so desperate for this need that we’ll go out of our way to try and fill it somehow.

For example, a friend I knew was so lonely at one period in her life that she would go out of her way to meet doctors. She wasn’t really sick  or had any real health issues but she wanted to feel loved so badly that she would actually pay for it in order to feel it.

Most of people’s problems today stem from this basic necessity. It’s not a financial problem, it’s not an infidelity problem, it’s not a relationship problem, it’s not the kids fault, it’s not job related, a lot of the problems we have today are merely symptoms from the true disease, which is simply, we’re lacking love.

So how do we go about finding true love? Is there such a thing? The world is filled with so many definitions of love that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. When you examine much of the worldly beliefs on love, particularly the media & the majority of society, you’ll realize that they have a pretty poor track record of love.

For example, approximately 40% of all marriages end in divorce. On top of that, people who were not christians had a 38% divorce rate which was the highest amongst all groups surveyed. Society often attempts to point out that born again christians have the same divorce rate as non-christians.

However, those born again christians who went to church regularly, read the bible regularly, had a divorce rate of 26% which was the lowest among groups (divorcerate.org & opposingviews.com).

The truth is, God is the only one who can fill the need of love because according to his word, he is love itself. God is love, which means that in order to ever experience the love we were designed for, the one you’ve been searching for all of your life, you have to have God.

Nothing in this world will ever fulfill you like God because you were designed by him and for him. It’s like you have a cookie cutter shaped hole in your soul that can only be filled by God. You can try and fit other things in there but nothing will ever truly fit.

 What do you do when you feel lonely? How do you handle it? Do you agree with the author’s perspective on loneliness? Leave your comments below!

11Jan 2013

Get Rid of the Blame Game Once & For All

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A famous quote I once heard was, “If you blame others for your problems, do you credit them with your successes?”   Of course not, we are always quick to blame others and easily as quick to take credit for our successes.

Why is that? Why is it so much easier to blame someone else for the problems we’ve caused? Why is it so much easier to use an excuse than to be honest about whose at fault?

The simple answer is, pride! We all want to feel special and we’ll do whatever it takes to make us feel special. Most of the time it’s by putting others down in order to inflate ourselves up. Or maybe we exaggerate the truth about something we did. Pride is so sneaky too, we can be doing it without even know it.

For example, I used to play baseball in Little League and was selected to play at Wrigley Field for the Southwest Michigan All-star game. Over the years, I’ve exaggerated this truth into I was an all-american, all-michigan baseball player.

I cringe as I write this because my pride still has a hard time letting this one go but it’s the truth. Why didn’t I just tell the truth? Well, I honestly didn’t feel all that special to begin with which is why I felt the need to exaggerate. I know so many people including myself, who have been through experiences that would make even the strongest people in the Bible feel like a nobody, unloved, abandoned, lonely, and unimportant.

We then attempt to distract ourselves from the problem through material things like putting others down, blaming others, using drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, in order to ‘cure’ the problem. I can assure you that you will never find your true self worth in any of those things.

Do you want to know what really works? The only real and lasting cure to making you feel special is to have a relationship with God. You see, in God’s eyes you are his most beloved, his most precious and beautiful child that he made.

Have you ever watched your children sleep at night? Do you ever get the wonderful feeling of joy when you watch them sleep so peacefully? Quadruple that by a million and that is how God feels about you! He is the only one who can fill that tiny spot in your soul, the one that you just can’t seem to get rid of but long for.

Once you truly understand and realize this, than your life will be changed forever. You’ll no longer feel the need to constantly be blaming, comparing, or putting others down. You’ll experience a true satisfaction and peace that you’ve been waiting for your entire life.

 Do you struggle with blaming others? What do you think is the reason people often blame others? Leave your comments below!

11Jan 2013

People Are Talking, Find Out Why

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As I sit down and browse through the channels on T.V. I stop on the E Network only to see Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian fighting on television. I thought to myself, why is she so popular? And who are these people I always hear about on MTV called the Jersey Shore? I’ve never actually watched Jersey Shore but from what I’ve heard, it’s just a bunch of young people drinking and partying in New Jersey.

Hmmm, I come back to the same question, why are any of these people popular? Well, I think what it all comes down to is that people like drama. Any sort of drama or controversy seems to get people’s attention and helps us ‘break’ away from our everyday, monotonous lives. This is quite sad when you really think about it.

What’s worse is that the people who cause the most drama tend to be some of the worst role models in today’s society. In no way can you honestly tell me that these people are good role models, at least, based on the part we see on T.V. which is what most of us we’ll probably ever see.

So the question I pose is, is it ok to watch these shows? Should we be ‘escaping’ into the arms of reality shows that promote promiscuity, drunkenness, pre-marital sex, swearing, and the pursuit of material things to make us happy? I’m not going to stand here and pretend like I don’t watch these shows, I have watched a couple episodes of the Kardashian show and it can be somewhat enticing.

However, I’m always left to think, what impression did that leave on me and was it a good one? As hard as it is in today’s society to escape all of this stuff, we really need to try and limit our exposure to it. Whether you believe in God or not isn’t the point, the real issue is that these shows are simply a bad influence on everyone.

Do you think society overvalues celebrities? Do you believe celebrities such as Kim Kardashian are good role models? Should parents limit exposure to these TV personalities? Leave your comments below!

11Jan 2013

The Secret To Taking Control Of Your Money

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How many times have you thought about what you would do if you won the lottery? It’s ok, everyone does it lol. I used to actually plan it out saying, “Alright, with 20 million dollars I will tithe 10%, but wait, I would make the check anonymous so that I didn’t bring attention to myself!” Then I would feel really good about myself for being so humble until I realize 10 seconds later that I’ll probably never be able to do that because God knows my true intentions lol.

Nonetheless, Money has to be one of the top 3 things talked about in a given day, maybe number 1. It’s no wonder we value it so much, we need it to pay for our homes or apartments, our food, clothing, and the lovely bills you get in the mail on a daily basis. I personally was never very good with money.

By the time money was relevant to me,  I had grown up in an unstable home where their was never a mother-father relationship. It was always mother-step-dad or father-girlfriend. I don’t fault my parents for this at all. They both are incredibly, loving parents but I also am aware that it was very difficult to teach lessons to a child about money when the home is constantly changing.

So as you can imagine, two factors seemed to motivate me to spend: My hurts from the past and a lack of principles on how to save and be smart with my money. When I was in high school I got an 89 Nissan Maxima that was eventually replaced by my dad’s nissan altima. Man, I had my own car with no debt and that was a pretty sweet deal but I didn’t think of it that way.

I struggled with my self-esteem so much that I didn’t want that car. I experienced a lot of racism growing up as a child so somehow I learned to hate my ethnicity. I looked at my nissan altima as an asian ‘type’ of car and so I went american. I eventually went through 4 different cars before I finally had to settle on a honda civic several years later.

As I reflect back on it now, I realized how much I sought approval from others. I was so concerned with how my friends, family, and strangers would perceive me that I thought a ‘cool’ car would be the cure.

Now, I know that this might be considered ‘typical’ of a high school male which I would agree. However, this habit of spending on things only to make myself feel better has continued up until about a year ago. God finally stepped in and made me realize the importance of money. Yes, God does talk about money a lot in the bible.

The conclusion I came to was that so many of us get caught in the trap of buying more and more things to help us feel better about ourselves. It works temporarily but never satisfies, which is why we come back for more. The truth is that God is the only one who can satisfy. We were built by God and for God so it only makes sense that our peace and fulfillment will come only through him.

How do you handle your money? Do you struggle with money issues? What are some solutions that have worked for you, that help save you money and get more control of it?

08Jan 2013

How To Overcome Depression

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According to depressionstatistics.org, “Over 15 million people in the United States alone suffer from depression.” In fact, I personally think that just about every person will experience some form of depression in their life at one point or another.

Life is hard, really hard, I know people who have been through some of the most tragic things a person could ever experience. I know a couple who got cancer at the exact same time, multiple people who have been cheated on, divorced, people who wanted to kill themselves including me at one time.

On the news their was even a story about a mother putting her own baby in a microwave and turning it on because she was so upset with her!

Their is a lot of things that a person could get depressed about, no doubt about that. However, two important people in my life gave me a good perspective on depression which has always stuck with me which is, depression is really a mind-set.

Your basically choosing to feel sorry for yourself, your situation, your problems. Depression in itself is a selfish choice. What?!? The first time I heard that I felt so mad and angry at the other people. I thought to myself, “Excuse me, how dare you say those things around me when I’m going through such a difficult time!”

15 minutes later, which is generally the amount of time it takes me to, ‘cool off,’ I thought to myself, “Crapola, that person is right.” I was getting angry about what they said because I knew they were right and wanted them to go along with me on my, ‘Let’s feel sorry for Peter train.’

So obviously this isn’t the answer that a lot you guys probably wanted to hear but neither did I at the time. However, you have to understand that nothing is going to change your situation while you feel depressed. In fact, when your depressed, what really happens is that you become extremely unproductive which makes the situation a perpetual cycle of

‘Feel sorry for self > emotional feelings of depression develop which reinforce the behavior > become unproductive because of hopelessness/helplessness > nothing happens which reinforces depressive state of feeling sorry for self.’

The other thing you should understand if your a christian is that the negative things in your situation may have a purpose. I noticed when things are worse, I’m closer to God. I know a lot people who experience the same thing as well.

God says, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” -1 Peter 4:12-13

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you… to teach you that man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” – Deuteronomy  8:2-3

The trial could be a test from God, maybe he wants you to turn to him more, maybe he wants to help you grow. Another possibility is that the negative things that are happening are simply because of the negative, sinful choices of yourself or others.

I would guess that a majority of the problems in this world are in fact, our fault. Still, their are people with diseases, deformities, and problems that don’t make sense and seem entirely out of our control. We still have to be faithful in God and know that in our limited, finite wisdom, we cannot attempt to explain everything because it’s impossible, only God can.

One thing I noticed personally is that helping others also helped me overcome depression. It seems contradictory because your like, “Why should I care about other people’s problems when my own problems are so bad,” however, you’d be amazed at how easily depression will go away when you look after and help others.

Why? Because your not focused on your own problems which seems to support the definition that depression is merely a mindset. Maybe that’s why God’s second greatest commandment was to love others as  ourselves.

God seems to always respond when things are tough, when things seem the lowest, when the easy way out is to be depressed and sorry for yourself. But when you keep your faith in God, you hold onto his promises, and move to help others, God seems to open new doors that you never thought possible.

More interesting facts about depression (depressionstatistics.org):

Depression in Children

Most parents may not be aware of but depression also hits children. Children can either inherit this illness from their parents or just develop it as a result of being overly exposed to a stressful environment. Statistics show that for every 33 children, there’s at least one who will suffer from clinical depression.

Depression in Women

Women have higher risks of developing depression compared to men. Specifically, statistics show that for every man who suffers from depression, two women will. And compared to single women, married women especially those who just had birth are likely to suffer from depression, including postpartum depression.

Depression in Men

The common reasons why men suffer from depression include unemployment, forced retirement, divorce, or separation from their immediate family. While women have higher risks of developing depression, suicidal tendencies in men are higher; the rate of which is three times than that of women. Also, men tend to develop cardiovascular diseases after they are diagnosed with depression.

Depression in Elderly People

Apart from the health problems that come with old age, elderly people also suffer from depression. They have higher suicidal tendencies as triggered by the depression they’re suffering. And compared to children and adults, the cost that comes with the treatment of depression in elderly is 50% higher. On the other hand, those who take care of the elderly also tend to develop depressive symptoms.

 Do you struggle with Depression? How do you manage it? What do you think causes Depression? Leave your comments below!